the wandering storyteller

We’re working on calendars now and while creating a really cute one that I will be back next week with, it dawned on me that I never got around to sharing what we’d done for our Fall and Winter shenanigans. Something about explaining how days become weeks and weeks become months and months become years really reminded me that time really does move way too fast.

That said, without further ado, Fall:

Fall: Apples and Turkeys

When we sat down to do this project, I thought I had finally broken Turtle when he said, “We don’t paint with apples.” No? I asked, what do we paint with? “Vegetables!”

Apple Print Making: Did you know if you cut an apple in half, you will get a star shape? I did not.

Suggestion: If you want the star shape to show up, after you dip the apple in the paint, dab it on a spare piece of paper as too much paint hides the shape.

Mini Caramel Apples! Cute… in theory. Needed: lollipop sticks (which I could NOT for the life of me find and just sawed up some kebab sticks instead), caramel, apples. melon baller and waxed paper.

Super fun!

And super cute!

And we also got silly…

I got the idea and directions from this site which was kind enough to show a picture of the first attempt so I was prepared for it not to be awesome. While my apples didn’t look as sad as their first attempt, it still was hard to keep the caramel on the apples. But that was okay, because we gobbled them up pretty quickly so it didn’t matter.

Speaking of Gobbling… we also celebrated Thanksgiving.

Foot print turkey with hand print feathers. :)

Turtle’s Mutant TurkeyHe went a bit crazy with the glitter… and googly eyes. <3

We also read books!

Awesome Autumn by Bruce Goldstone: This book has some great crafts in the back that we had fun with.

Apples, Apples, Apples by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace: Cute story with lot of information about apples included. This is where we got the idea for apple print painting.

And since Fall also includes Halloween, here is a link to my Halloween post.

Winter: Snowy Shenanigans

Well, aside from all the Christmas shenanigans we got up to, we mostly did a bunch of crafts about snow. Sadly we didn’t really get to play in any. Mostly because we haven’t had much yet, but also, it turns out, Froggy isn’t a fan.

Even Captain America loves himself some glitter!

And we also did these snowflakes with puffy paint that we made ourselves that I got from Inner Child Fun:

Self rising flour (which you can make yourself), salt, water and a squeeze bottle.

Food coloring if you want. Though you obviously don’t need it for snowflakes. We used card stock because after you make your design, you PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE!

A minute in the microwave and you get this puffy masterpiece!

And because we can’t have a season (especially a snow type season) without having at least one craft that includes marshmallows, and because it’s a really good fine motor skill, we made:

The marshmallows and spaghetti thing made me think of the “take your child to work” activity that my company used to teach them about project management and design. They had to design the tallest tower they could, but at a random point during the build, the program manager would get pulled out and either the time-line or the budget got cut. It was pretty neat.

Might be interesting to start them on the old programming a PB&J too. (I’ll explain in person. )